Tim Letscher

If there is one overarching theme coming out of The Wall Street Journal’s D: Dive Into Mobile conference, it’s that the future is in your pocket.

It’s no surprise that a conference focused on mobile is going to claim that mobile is the future, but when the executive chairman of Google, the CEO of Mozilla and the CTO of engineering for Facebook are doing the talking, it can’t be ignored. As Mike Schroepfer, the CTO of Facebook said, “If you’re building for the Web, you’re doing it wrong.” It wasn’t just tech companies evangelizing this message either. Bob Bowman, president of Major League Baseball Advanced Media said, “We’re big believers that this [phone] screen is the first screen. Anybody that doesn’t believe that is living on another planet or doesn’t have children. Reality is the second screen.”

That brings up another point made clear during the conference: For younger generations, mobile is their primary avenue of communication. Nancy Lublin, CEO of the nonprofit DoSomething.org, reaches more than a million teens every week via Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr, but her number one way of reaching them is SMS. In fact, her organization boasts a 97 percent open rate on SMS, with an average reply time of just 14 minutes. If you want to reach a teen, it better be on mobile.

Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel illustrated an adoption pattern worth noting. His ephemeral photo-sharing app was widely adopted by teenagers, followed by an older generation representing the teens’ parents. Only then did the millennial generation start to catch on, an adoption pattern to remember the next time you’re launching an app or a marketing program. To put Snapchat’s success in perspective, Instagram gets 45MM photo uploads a month. Snapchat gets 150MM. Why? Spiegel said, “We believe the default should be ephemerality.” The notion of ephemerality is worth watching. The permanence of Facebook or the self-aware nature of Instagram and Twitter restrict us, in a way in which we are consciously publishing a piece of our idealized self. Snapchat is very much in the moment and in many ways is closer to everyday conversations that live on in memory rather than on your permanent record. Brands should acknowledge this shift and consider moving some resources in this direction to attract this audience.

Notably absent from the conference was Apple. While execs from Snapchat, Waze and WhatsApp were there to represent iOS app success, most off-the-cuff comments about the future of mobile centered on Android. The open nature of the Android operating system plays perfectly into mobile, especially when thinking of mobile as a context and less as a device. If the context is a house or a car or a backyard, the versatility of Android can adapt to that setting. As marketers, we need to design for this future, giving more weight to location and time of day, rather than device. This way, we can put context data to use to deliver the kind of relevant stuff that makes peoples’ lives easier, productive and fulfilling.

Kyle Johnson

Seeing social media sharing buttons across the top of a site has become the norm. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and even Google+ have buttons on almost every page we see. Some tools, like addthis.com, even let you add over 300 social network buttons to your site. With all these choices, how do you determine which networks are the best for your site?

Through testing, we set out to identify just that, the best set of social sharing buttons to include on one of our client sites. What we found was surprising: Pinterest is both the hero and the villain of social sharing buttons.

What We Did

We tested two different combinations of sharing buttons. The Original Set included buttons for Facebook and Twitter. The Test Set added Pinterest and Google+ buttons, along with a “more” dropdown that included tumblr and StumbleUpon. Each set was presented about 50% of the time on a highly trafficked site. We tracked shares using both Google Analytics and network specific insights platforms, such as Facebook Insights.

What We Learned

The Pinterest button has volume, Facebook is close
In the Test Set, Pinterest and Facebook accounted for 63 times more button shares than all four of the other networks combined. In the Original Set, Facebook outperformed Twitter by a factor of 93. So, for this audience Google+, Twitter, StumbleUpon and tumblr sharing buttons are all non-factors. We can’t make blanket statements about the success of those network buttons, as this behavior is audience driven, but those networks regularly have a lower volume. Visitors are still sharing content on lesser networks, but it appears that they prefer other methods of sharing than buttons.

The Pinterest button bullies Facebook
The addition of the Pinterest button increased the total number of button shares almost 500%, but came at the cost of a 33% reduction in Facebook Likes and shares. In fact, adding the Pinterest button led to a 31% loss of shares on all other networks. It would seem that visitors are only willing to share using one button, and that Pinterest takes precedence. Is Pinterest worth the reduction of Facebook shares?

The Pinterest button also bullies Pinterest
When given the option to use a sharing button instead of an organic method, such as the Pin It! bookmarklet, visitors will use the button. This seems obvious, but there are some implications. There was a 30% reduction in  organic Pins once the Pinterest button was added. So, total button shares went up with the addition of a Pinterest button, but a majority of the increase was from people using the button instead of sharing organically; ultimately at the cost of Facebook interactions.

What’s the value of a Pin?
The value of a social share is as contested as the measurement as value of a social follower. Pinterest, being new and unique, is even harder to define. There’s a few subtle ways Pinterest and its users behave that provide some insight into the benefit of a Pin.

Pins quickly lose branding. While looking at your feed, no source is displayed for Pins or Repins. In fact, to see the source while shifting through a person’s pins you need to navigate to the particular user’s individual boards. Repins account for 80% of all Pins, one of our client’s popular photos last month was pinned 13 times from the site and repined over 11,000 times. The mobile experience behaves similarly.

So, without a user taking extra steps to find the source of a Pin, it remains fairly anonymous. If your photo content is not easily recognizable, Pinterest users will likely not know it’s related your brand. If your brand has easily recognizable content, such as cars or mascots, branding will remain. Except for a few iconic pieces, food, clothing and furniture are all products examples that often are Pinned without brand recognition.

If you run a photo-centric site, you’ve undoubtedly noticed spikes in Pinterest referrals. For sites we track, usually one or two Pins are responsible for the majority of the increase. On average, we’ve seen visitors from Pinterest spend 70% less time on site, have a bounce rate increase of 30%, and mostly view only the page they landed on from the Pin. In the data we analyzed, site visitors from Pinterest provide little value to high-level objectives.

Takeaways
Unless you’re targeting an audience that matches a lesser-used network’s demographics, leave the buttons off the site and let people share organically.

While some brands have used Pinterest accounts correctly, value for most brands lies in the organic pinning already happening without a Pinterest button.

We’re big believers in never-ending testing, so this is just the beginning. As we roll out other styles and combinations, we’ll let you know how these initial findings change.

Cassie D'Kae + Michael Schwandt

Stepping off the elevators at Colle+McVoy, employees and visitors are immediately greeted by sounds of Minnesota’s beloved, eclectic radio station, The Current, pumping through the speakers. Its presence isn’t just a welcomed distraction, it helps define and capture the energy of this agency. The Current doesn’t have a specific format — it’s not top 40, it’s not classic rock, it’s not lite jazz. It’s a station that tries to share the most creative and interesting music that programmers can find, whether it’s a gem from the past, or an obscure new artist on the cusp of stardom. Colle+McVoy has a similar desire — to foster a community of creativity and share the most innovative work we can with the rest of the world. Our music choice is definitely no accident.

It is apparent from one walk around the offices of C+M that our love for music definitely does not stop in the lobby. Desks are adorned with headphones and speakers of all shapes and sizes. Personal rock out sessions or cubicle dance parties can spontaneously erupt at any time. And there is always someone talking about a show they saw, will see, or wanted to see but couldn't attend. Music permeates our walls and ears 24/7. It truly is creative fuel that plays an enormous role in establishing a fun, inspirational and open atmosphere, rather than a stale, dry one.

So what is it about music that is so intrinsically tied to creative-driven industries, advertising in particular? According to Don Campbell, author of The Mozart Effect and a renowned authority on the transformative power of music, "Music can be used to stimulate, activate, and relax the mind and body.” All of which are key elements in a successful creative process, and hence, producing stand out work for clients. What’s more? Elena Mannes, author of The Power of Music, states, "scientists have found that music stimulates more parts of the brain than any other human function."

At Colle+McVoy —based in the heart of urban, arts-heavy Minneapolis— music offers employees respite in the middle of a stressful day, provides sonic caffeine for late nights and early morning deadlines, and gives us just the right amount of inspiration to successfully complete a project. For C+M, creativity is not a department, but an expectation of all employees. So although musical tastes are wide and varied at C+M, there’s no doubt that it positively impacts every individual, acting as a catalyst for us each to reach our full creative potential.

A fierce advocate of music in almost any environment, Campbell believes, “More and more businesses are recognizing the importance of music in the workplace." This is certainly true at C+M, and has been for some time. Since music surrounds is ingrained in our culture and pushes us to do great work, we have decided to go one step further by bringing bands and musicians to perform live at the agency. This initiative, dubbed C+M Sessions, will kick off its inaugural performance this evening, Thursday, Aug. 2, with local roadhouse rockers, The 4onthefloor. It’s time to take off your headphones, put on your dancing shoes, and swill a cold beer to some rock and roll in the summer sun.